


See the Unwritten

by Mertiya



Series: Sands of Time [3]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Doomed Timelines, F/F, First Kiss, First Time, Flashbacks, I Will Remember You, I plan on at least one sequel set in the dragons timeline, Khans timeline, The very end of the khans timeline, Tragedy, but it is as yet unfinished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anafenza has had troubling nightmares, and she is concerned for Narset.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See the Unwritten

            Anafenza clawed her way to the surface of the darkness, tangled and trapped, thrashing madly.  “Look out!” she cried, throwing herself upright.  Where was she?  The world seemed to be tilting madly, and it took a moment for her mind to settle. The early dawn light seeping into her room illuminated her sleeping quarters, still simply furnished even some time after her ascension to khan.  She had not yet grown out of the habits she had learned as a patroller on the Salt Road—to live simply and carry little but her essentials.  So it was an easy matter for her to throw an extra outfit into a bag, equip herself with scimitar and cloak, and head for the door, driven by an undeniable sense of urgency.

            “My khan?” It was Gvar.

            “I must go,” Anafenza snapped.  “Get a mount saddled.”

            “Anafenza?”

            She paused, aware of how rattled she must look.  “I won’t be gone long,” she said, hoping she wasn’t lying.

            Gvar looked into her eyes, grimaced, then nodded.  “I’ll cover for you,” he said, flashing her the smile she associated with their younger days as patrollers together, on those few occasions she had needed to be gone to be alone or—to slip away to see someone.

            “Thank you,” she said, pausing for a moment to squeeze his shoulder, and then hurrying out.

~

_Five years earlier…_

            Narset paused, rocking nervously back and forth on the balls of her feet in front of the barracks door.  She knew that there was only one person inside the dormitory that night—she had watched to make sure that was the case.  And she knew that that person had said that she wanted to see her again. But many things could change in the span of a few months, and Narset found herself hesitating, chewing on her knuckle doubtfully.

            She wasn’t certain why the fear had ambushed her here, standing outside the door, when she had been planning and hoping and moving to get herself here for weeks now.  But now that she was close to her goal, she hesitated.  And she didn’t know why.

            Finally, with an effort, she reached for the handle of the door, twisted it, let it swing silently open.  Inside the stark, austere room, a lone figure was seated on a bed, her face turned to the window.  Narset opened her mouth, but her throat seemed to have closed up, sealing her voice away. She tried again, thinking how easily the words had flowed when she had never met the girl in front of her. What was so different now? They had shared a bed, shared a meal, and parted.  She had enjoyed herself.  She’d thought—Anafenza had as well.

            Words didn’t come, but a soft noise did, and Anafenza turned toward her, her close-cropped hair still framing her square-jawed face the way it had when she had glanced back, the morning she had ridden away.  Finally, as the other girl began to rise from the bed, the words poured out in a soft, tumbling torrent.  “I’ve been among the Sultai, and I came back this way—I was hoping to see you, because you asked if you’d see me again, so I thought perhaps you wanted to.”

            Anafenza crossed the room in a few strides, and Narset found herself looking up slightly to meet the other girl’s gaze.  The Abzan patroller scowled at her, and Narset felt her stomach sinking, cold rising toward her chest.  It had been a mistake.  This had been a mistake.

            But the scowl flitted away as Anafenza rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, and there were tears—it hadn’t been a scowl, she had been blinking her eyes. “I wanted to see you. But I didn’t know if you’d come back. I’ve been thinking about you, and I—”

            Narset wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but they were both in motion at the same time.  Anafenza’s hand ended up on the back of Narset’s head, and Narset’s hand was on the Abzan girl’s waist.  Anafenza’s lips were warm on Narset’s own, and they felt soft and comfortable and awkward all at the same time.

            It was a new sensation, and one that Narset found that she liked very much. She already felt more comfortable with Anafenza than with her fellow Jeskai students, though she wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was just that they had shared danger, rather than lessons.  Danger, Narset thought, probably showed you more of the other person’s soul more quickly than just learning things did.  Or maybe it was something else.  She was probably overthinking it.

            After a long moment, Anafenza pulled back.  “I, um,” she said.

            “Was that all right?” Narset asked eagerly.  “I liked it.  Did you like it?”  Dragon’s breath, she sounded so—so childish.

            Anafenza nodded.  “Yes,” she said firmly.  “I did.”

~

            Anafenza spurred her mount, cursing beneath her breath.  The place in her dreams had been a deep cleft in the side of the mountains, with dragon bones shining like pearls at the bottom. By the sparse vegetation growing along the lip of the crevasse and the light dusting of snow all around, she recognized it as Temur territory, but it was not a place she had ever visited.

            _Narset_ , she thought. _Where are you, my love?_

~

            Narset had discovered that kissing the edge of Anafenza’s mouth made her shiver and gasp.  She had also discovered that it was extremely pleasant to be underneath the other girl when she was doing the shivering.  The two of them were curled in Anafenza’s bed, the covers flung off, as Narset drew her lips from the other girl’s mouth to her throat.

            Anafenza whimpered, pushing her hips against Narset’s, and the Jeskai youth felt a sudden rush of heat spiking into her stomach.  She reached for Anafenza’s shirt, then paused. “I want—I want to know you,” she said urgently.  “I want to know everything about you.  I want to know how you move when I touch you—I want—”

            Anafenza kissed her again, deep and fierce and desperate, nodding against Narset’s mouth, threading their fingers together.  “Yes,” she said, voice trailing off into a whine as Narset slid her free hand up Anafenza’s stomach beneath the shirt.

~

            Anafenza did not know how long she had been riding.  Days had melted into one another, one after the next. She had taken brief pauses, to eat, and to sleep, but when she slept, the vision rose up in front of her eyes again, and she woke, sweating and screaming.  The pain of the future pulled her onwards, drawing her a map of the landscape that she followed unerringly.

            But she was all too afraid that these warnings—wherever they came from—came too late.

~

            They moved together, limbs entwined.  It was dark, but not so dark that Narset could not see Anafenza’s face, her mouth open, eyes squinted shut against some feeling that held them both powerless in its grip.  Mischievously, Narset ran her fingers lightly along Anafenza’s bare side, and the other girl gave a sharp intake of breath and opened her eyes in irritation.

            “That tickles!” she said.

            “Well, I needed to know if you were ticklish,” Narset said, and Anafenza kissed her again, and then moved again, one hand combing through Narset’s hair as she did.  Sweat and heat and Anafenza—Narset had to know her, had to map her, but it was so hard to focus in the midst of the mounting heat. “Need to know you,” she gasped again, and she saw that Anafenza was smiling.

            “Yes,” said the Abzan patroller.  “Dragons’ bones, _yes_.”

            Narset tried to focus on everything at once, but it broke apart into short, fragmentary pieces.  Anafenza’s hand running through her hair, pushing it back and leaving behind the marks of her own fingers in her glistening sweat.  The feeling of closeness—of wholeness—and of heat. Fingers in her hair, down her side. The light dusting of brown freckles over Anafenza’s nose.  One—two—seventeen distinct freckles, several more blurred together. Same heat, warmth, fuzzing and filling her as she and Anafenza moved in a clumsy, graceless dance. Soft trace of moisture down her throat, down her side, down her thighs.  Anafenza’s breath, ragged, her heart beating against Narset’s, the two rhythms clashing and rejoining, clashing and rejoining. All of it spiraling together, none of it enough, reaching and reaching and reaching, needing to be closer, needing to know, needing and needing and—

            She felt as if a scream erupted from her throat, but she heard nothing but silence as the heat filled her to the top and overflowed through her arms, her legs, fingers, toes, world.  Too much.  Too little. She still didn’t _know_.

            “Anafenza,” she murmured.  Her bedmate was still writhing and whimpering, and Narset watched her curiously for a moment, then swapped their positions, rolling over to pin Anafenza beneath her. Perhaps if her lips touched every little fragment of the other girl— _then_ she’d know.

~

            Anafenza crested the hill, urging her mount onwards.  Beneath her stretched the deep, ragged cleft of her dreams, and beyond it—Narset.  Finally. But she was not alone.

            Clad in heavy furs, Narset’s traveling companion was already clambering down the lip of the crest, and Anafenza felt hot rage burst from her as she saw that the Jeskai khan was locked in battle with a Mardu orc, and her companion had apparently abandoned her.  Cursing beneath her breath, Anafenza steered her mount around the outer cusp of the chasm. _Too late_ , whispered a voice in her head. 

            Everything was happening exactly as it had in her dream.  With horrified, slow clarity, she saw Narset raise her staff, and she tried to scream a warning, but it was whipped away by the wind, falling loudly on her own ears.  The orc ducked, sidestepped, struck.  Narset tottered.  Too late, Anafenza spurred her mount across the narrowing edge of the crevasse.  Goat and rider slammed into the back of the orc, crushing him to the ground and trampling him. Anafenza vaulted to the ground and fell to her knees beside Narset.

            The Jeskai monk was still breathing shallowly, a spreading red stain soaking through the front of her yellow robes.  “Narset,” whispered Anafenza, tearing open the front of the robe to look at the wound.

            Anafenza felt a muscle twitch in her jaw as she stared down at it. There was a ragged tear just beneath Narset’s sternum, and the bubbling sound of her breath said a lung had been punctured.  Her eyes were shut, her face pale, her lips bluish.  Anafenza grimly put pressure on the injury, but she could hear Narset’s breath failing.

            “Damn it,” she hissed fiercely.  “Narset, please.”

            The dark eyelashes fluttered, and Narset’s brown eyes opened. As she saw Anafenza, she smiled faintly and reached up a hand to weakly squeeze the Abzan khan’s own. “Don’t worry,” she murmured. “I promise I’ll always know you.” Anafenza tried to find a response, but the words wouldn’t leave her throat.  “Always,” Narset whispered again, and her eyes went blank, lids sliding only half-shut across suddenly relaxed pupils.  As Anafenza felt the cold pain searing up inside her, there was a sudden brilliant flash from within the rift.

            Time slowed and turned backward, the past changed, and the future crumbled away.

 


End file.
